1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a message delivery technique, which delivers messages to destinations via a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have been widely used data delivery services, where one server in general sends the same information to a plurality of previously registered members through a network such as the Internet. Some systems have a designated time delivery function of sending desired messages to the previously registered members at designated times. For example, there is a case where a server sends a message having contents linked to television programs and a user wishes to receive the message from the server only during the broadcast time of a user-desired television program.
As anther example, a homepage delivery system has been proposed in Japanese Patent Application Unexamined Publication No. P2001-67283A. More specifically, the delivery system receives setting data from a subscriber and stores a Web site address, a designated delivery time, a subscriber address, and search condition. When the designated delivery time has come, the system browses the homepage using the Web site address and extracts information from the homepage depending on the search condition. The extracted information is sent to the subscriber by e-mail.
When a user wishes to obtain such a designated time delivery service, however, the user must perform registration and cancellation. For example, in the case where the user wishes to receive a program-related message from a server only during the broadcast time of a user-desired television program, the user must make an entry in the server at the starting time of the user-desired television program and cancel the entry at the ending time. If the user forgets to cancel the entry, then the user will also receive undesired messages after the user-desired television program has been ended.
According to the prior art as described above, a user must frequently perform two operations, registration and cancellation, which is a burden on the user.